


Welcome to the Fall

by Niobium



Series: Avengers Team fics [10]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergent, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-03-30 22:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3955009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niobium/pseuds/Niobium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers pick up the pieces in the aftermath of Sokovia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thor

**Author's Note:**

> Inter- and post-film gap-fillers and ficlets, with varying POV characters. A couple of them are slightly canon divergent and will be labeled as such. 
> 
> I’ll keep adding to this until I run out of ideas. The title of each chapter is the POV character. I've only seen the movie once, and may be misremembering some of the finer details.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-divergent for Thor’s Naked Angry Bath scene. Draws on elements from [Waterborne](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3860368), but might be readable stand-alone.
> 
> Edit: I was confused as to the timeline at the end of the movie regarding the new base, so I’ve done some editing towards the end of this chapter to account for that.

***

Thor agrees to Stark’s plan without mentioning the finer points of the risks involved, and for once Steven is too preoccupied with other affairs to ask him about them. In truth, there’s no point; they are short on both time and options, and anyways he would go through with it regardless. Whatever personal danger he faces is his to worry about, and he won’t allow anyone to talk him out of it. (This is a lesson Sif and the Warriors Three have learned the hard way, and lectured him about at considerable length on numerous occasions, all to no avail.)

Stark has asked him to fuse the metal webbing the city’s underpinnings—vibranium, the humans call it—with lightning. This should push the vibranium into a more volatile and energetic state, allowing Stark to use it to shatter the city. However, this process will require a great deal of lightning, and since a storm would put Nick Fury’s flying vessel (and everyone on board it) at great risk he can’t summon one to ease the lightning’s formation. He’ll have to use Mjölnir and sheer willpower to drag all of the lightning out of the air. That will be the hard part.

He lands on the core and stretches his senses into the sky around them, searching for any and all eddies of natural force he can exploit. He pushes out, further and further, until the charge begins to build. Mjölnir thrums in his hand. There’s not much, but there’s enough.

“I’m ready Stark,” he shouts. He can barely hear himself speak over the howling wind as the city plummets back towards Midgard. Natural force claws at him. The atmosphere expects him to hand over what he’s promised. 

He makes out only one word of Stark’s response, though it’s the only one he needs to hear. “Now.”

He gives and the sky takes. The leaders rush in from every direction, setting his skin to tingling when they make contact. He guides the power, gathering and channeling it as best he can (this is much more difficult than it would be with a storm’s own inclinations to harness), and after a short struggle it surges through him and Mjölnir and into the vibranium. 

The tingling becomes searing fire. He can feel every last thread of lightning from its source in the skies around them to the exact molecule of metal it connects to. He’s the heart of a tenuous, burning construct spreading for thousands of leagues, and the slightest touch will rip him apart. He hovers like this for a handful of breathes, suspended and fragile and endless. Then the vibranium absorbs the power of the lightning and reacts to Stark’s machinations, shattering itself with enough force to rip Mjölnir from Thor’s hand and cast him from the sky.

He comes to mere moments later. Instinct tells him that he’s falling and seriously injured, yet he feels wholly disconnected from everything happening around him. He should stop his decent, he should summon Mjölnir, he should do _something_ , but no part of him responds to his will. All he can do is watch the the ruins of the city and its foundations spread across the sky.

The force of his impact with the lake’s surface plunges him into darkness.

***

He sees the stones again: the red, writhing Aether; the sharp blue angles of the Tesseract; a bright purple spark hidden behind a honeycomb of gray; a yellow heart buried in a blue gem housed in a scepter.

He reaches for them and they scatter. The Aether slithers away into the eye socket of a golden-green skull tumbling through space. A metallic, orange and blue bird snatches up the purple spark and wings away over the horizon. The scepter breaks apart, releasing a bright yellow gem, and a humanoid shape in shades of green and red takes it up and considers it. And the Tesseract rockets to Asgard, guided by Muninn and Huginn through the towering spires and thundering waterfalls to the palace. There it lands in Odin’s outstretched hand.

No. Not Odin’s. This hand is too young, too long-fingered and fine-boned. This is a hand Thor has watched work illusions and wield short daggers. 

He tries to cry out, and the lake fills his lungs.

***

He awakens coughing up water, and for a moment he panics and thinks he never made it out of the cave, that even now Erik is struggling to save him. Then he realizes this isn’t the Water of Sight; where that water had been metallic and rich, this is harsh and pure. The Water of Sight had clung to him, and this water is stripping him raw. 

A bitterly cold and fierce wind roars in his ears and his injuries throb. Something is embedded in one of his legs, something else in the opposing shoulder. Taking his first clear breath sets his back to spasming. He catches a glimpse of a bright blue sky and looming white clouds and a familiar face ( _James Rhodes_ ) saying something he can’t discern, and blacks out.

***

He gradually drifts into a state of disconnected awareness that he recognizes as the regenerative sleep. Mjölnir anchors him like it always does when he heals, and he draws reassurance from this familiar state of affairs. Given the extent of his injuries—though he can only sense them in a peripheral way they seem significant—he’ll be like this for some time, so he gives himself leave to relax.

Another source of power hovers nearby. It has the strange, prickly flavor of mind magic and is almost close enough to reach, but when he tries to touch it Mjölnir holds him back. The hammer radiates an intense reluctance to let him interact with this other power. That only makes him more curious, though not so curious as to disrupt his healing. He stops trying, and Mjölnir subsides. 

Usually the sleep bleeds together into one long, quiet moment of waiting to exist again. This time, something is tugging at him like a gentle and insistent tide. Again he thinks of the Water of Sight, and again he tries to reject the notion out of hand. Isn’t he secure on Nick Fury’s vessel, or some similar safe location, resting after their hard-won and costly victory?

Try as he might, he can’t hold onto those thoughts long enough to reconcile their dissonance. They slip through his fingers like smoke, replaced by the sensation of numerous places in time coalescing into one instance. Memories belonging to other, long-dead Æsir seep into him, filling his mind’s eye.

He and Frigga are on a small outcropping jutting out from the side of the mountain which had been only a dark sentinel in the Water’s first vision. The jagged slopes just below them suggest it’s a young volcano, though old enough that brightly colored flowers of red, blue, purple, and gold and clumps of silver-leafed bushes have made a foothold in the landscape. The air is sharp and chill, and they’re both dressed for it in fur-lined leathers; hers, green and silver, his, red and gray. Fat, blue-gray clouds, heavy with snow or late autumn rain, meander by overhead. 

Further down the mountainside flattens out into sharp cliffs covered in trees. Some are tall and majestic and stand aloof from one another, and have pale red or dusky brown needles, while others are clustered in compact groves, and bear coin-shaped, green-gold leaves that flash in the wind. Beyond the cliffs lies a black sand beach, which in turn gives way to the cold, blue ocean. 

From their vantage point he can see a fair distance across the water. There are more islands all around them; a few sport tall mountains like this one, but others are broad and flat, with the suggestions of buildings crowding them.

“Why have we never rebuilt this?” he asks. 

Frigga says, “Because it would be a an illusion. Better to build a monument to what was, than to recreate it in the vain hope it could ever compare.”

He spots a handful of ships carefully navigating the storm-rough seas. “We left so much behind when we departed,” he says, and wonders how he can feel loss for something he has never known. (That’s the Water’s doing, of course. He should have known using it would be double-edged in more ways than one.)

Frigga replies, “And yet not everything.” He looks askance at her; she’s watching the ships too. “So long as the Æsir remain, our home world will as well. We are a part of it, and it will ever be a part of us, in the same way Asgard is now.”

Thor frowns at her. She catches his look and turns to face him. “Tell me how we use magic.”

His reply is automatic, drilled into him by his teachers (her among them) from childhood. “We sense the deeper forces of the Universe, which allows us to control them and so effect change upon it.”

“And how do we control them?”

He hesitates. There is, of course, no explicitly correct answer to such a question. The very nature of magic is perception, and perceptions differ greatly across the whole of existence. He can feel, though, that she is trying to get at something specific. This has always been her manner when teaching him. 

He considers the question very carefully, then says, “By giving over some control of ourselves.” She waits, and he says, “By surrendering of ourselves to it.”

She nods. “And when we do that, what happens?”

“There is the possibility, though not the certainty, that the forces will respond in kind.”

“The possibility, but not the certainty,” she echoes, and looks down at the beach below them. “Sometimes the tide casts back things it has claimed, and sometimes the oceans refuse to relinquish their hold on that which they take. So we too have left pieces of ourselves in the Universe, and carry some of it within us.” She looks at him again. “Our home world is gone as a place, yet fragments of it survive in our hearts and minds. You would never have been able to reach it within the Water of Sight otherwise.”

“But how am I here again, now? I am not in the Water of Sight.”

She gives him a sad smile. He knows the answer even as she says it. “The Water could not have given you anything if you were not willing to give a part of yourself to it.”

The wind blows harder and colder. Thor knows the moment has begun to unravel, and in seconds it will shred around him. He’s not sure what will happen then.

“Why am I here?”

“Because you must remember.”

“Remember what? What have I forgotten?”

Thick rain laden with ice starts to fall. She points down below them to the cliffs. There is a grove of trees with a small clearing dominated by a crater shaped roughly like a hand. The same flowers growing on the volcano line the crater. Blue, red, purple, and yellow flowers. The wind rises and tears them from the ground. 

The rain turns to hail. Gently, sadly, Frigga says, “You must remember his nature.”

Thor reaches for her through the storm. “Mother—”

***

Mjölnir yanks him back hard enough that his regeneration ends abruptly. The sleep releases him, and his first truly conscious thought is that he will be stiff and sore for some time to come. His sense of permanence is especially tender, and small wonder. Seldom has he ever forced his magic to such an extent.

He hears Jane say, “Hey,” and opens his eyes. She leans forward from her chair and pushes his hair back from his face. He manages a small smile and glances around. He doesn’t recognize this healing ward; it’s not the one in Stark’s Tower, though the equipment is similar, and he can’t hear or feel the engines of Fury’s vessel. They are somewhere else, somewhere he hasn’t been before.

Jane must notice him looking around the room, because she says, “Apparently the Tower’s not a great place for you guys to hang out right now. This is a super-secret location of Nick’s, which he says you’re only allowed to stay at long enough to build yourselves something new and less out in the open.” She seems amused. “No more fans crowding the entrance and creating security problems when you guys come and go, I guess.”

Thor relaxes. It’s probably for the best, all things considered. He sees Jane has a tablet with her, and says, “I hope your work was not interrupted.” His voice sounds rough and scratchy to his own ears.

She shrugs and scoots the chair closer to the edge of his bed. “I’m between conferences and scope time.” She takes one of his hands in hers and smiles. The feel of her skin, just a fraction cooler than his, draws him closer to wakefulness. “You timed this just right.”

“Then it is your rest you have sacrificed.”

“Please. Like I do anything but work during my time off if you aren’t there to help Darcy make me relax.” 

He nods, accepting her reassurance with equanimity. She rubs his hand, and her demeanor falters. “I saw everything on the news. Looks like it was pretty bad.”

He glances down at himself. There are bandages on his shoulder and leg. He shifts slightly, and finds the majority of the stiffness seems to be confined to his upper back. “It was,” he admits.

“And it’s all taken care of?”

The memory of a golden hand crushing all life in the Universe flits through his mind. He meets her eyes again. “Most of it. But...there is more for me to attend to.”

She swallows and looks down at their hands. “You mean on Asgard.”

“Yes.”

Jane takes in a deep breath and lets it out. When she looks up at him again she’s regained her composure. “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

“As long as is required, and no longer.”

“But that could be a while,” she says, and Thor nods. She raises her eyebrows. “I don’t suppose there’s any possibility of me coming with you?”

She must see some manner of reaction from him to that question, since before he can respond her expression grows concerned. “Is it that bad?” she asks in a low voice.

“I will not know for certain until I am there and can investigate for myself.”

She gives him a look that’s equal parts fondness and exasperation, and gets up from her chair. “Scooch over.”

He does as she asks, and she tucks herself into the narrow space he’s made, careful to avoid his shoulder as she settles against him and rests her head on his chest. He breathes in the smell of her and tells himself he won’t be gone long.

“When are you leaving?”

“When I am fully healed and have had time to speak with the others.” He runs a finger along her cheek. “And after I have had a day of your company, if I may presume to request it.”

She’s quiet for a spell, then says, “So you can bid me a proper farewell?” 

Her voice is taut, and he begins to worry he’s going about this all wrong. Despite knowing such a situation might arise sooner or later, they’ve never defined their relations in concrete terms, nor have they ever discussed something more permanent. Now, he’ll be leaving for a length of time which could exceed their expectations. He knows he has no right to ask her to wait for him, though he wants to desperately.

He strokes her arm. “So that I may convince you of my intent to return as quickly as possible.” It’s not quite asking her to wait. Not quite.

She sighs and squeezes him. Her breath on his skin is warm as she murmurs against chest, “Okay. But if I get that wormhole generator finished while you’re gone, I’m not waiting for you to come back before I try it out.”

Something which had begun to knot up inside him loosens. He kisses her hair. “Very little would please me more than to return and hear of your exploits.”

“We’ll see if you still feel that way when I cause an intergalactic diplomatic incident by showing up somewhere completely unannounced,” she mumbles, her tone wry, and he laughs quietly.

“I will gladly plead your case to whomever I must should such an event transpire.”

“I love you, but you really don’t strike me as the best negotiator.” 

Doing his best to sound wounded, he says, “On the contrary. I have arbitrated numerous political disagreements over the centuries.”

Jane isn’t fooled. She humphs and pokes him in the side. “I _don’t_ mean with the hammer.”

He smiles and closes his eyes. He’s already growing tired again. “Only some of them have required Mjölnir.”

“Well I’ll try not to make too much of a mess out of interstellar relations if you promise not to use Mjölnir to sort things out on my behalf.” When he makes no response she nudges him. “Deal?”

“Deal,” he murmurs, and succumbs to sleep.


	2. Tony

***

The suit barely holds together when Thor’s lightning sets off the vibranium. Numerous sensor readouts on the HUD go red, the comms cut to static, and the blast knocks Tony head over heels. It’s hard to tell what’s louder—the thunder, or the explosion itself—and he grits his teeth as pressure waves rattle the armor so hard he thinks it’s going to come apart. He hears FRIDAY speaking but can’t make anything out until the noise ebbs.

“—outed some systems to restore the stabilizers, but we’re losing power too quickly to stay airborne much longer. And there’s a leak in the right leg hydraulics—”

The HUD flickers and slowly resolves, showing the rain of debris as he soars through it. Tony tells himself he’s not going to throw up and focuses on navigating the mess to clear airspace. At some point the comms come back on, though he and FRIDAY are so focused on the remains of the city scattering in every direction that the urgent voices all bleed together into background noise. Huge chunks of rock and fragmented buildings and cars and shards of vibranium tumble down into the lake and crater below. He tracks Rhodey weaving and dodging and allows himself a sigh of relief. Only when they’re both clear does he bother trying to make out any of the voices in his ears.

“Tony,” Steve is saying, probably not for the first time.

“Yeah, here.” An alert pops up, and he winces. “Mostly.”

“Colonel.”

“I’m clear,” Rhodey says.

“Thor.”

Silence. Tony flips to scanning for life signs. Unfortunately the vibranium is throwing everything off and renders the readings a mess.

“Thor,” Steve repeats. There’s still no response. 

Tony tries adjusting the sensors and it gets him nowhere. “Rhodey are you reading anything?”

“I’m trying but that metal’s giving off some sort of interference.”

“Fury,” Steve says. 

Nick comes on after a short pause. “We’re having the same problem.”

JARVIS’ voice—no, _Vision’s_ , Tony reminds himself—cuts in. “Scan for the hammer,” he suggests. “It’s signal should be strong enough to detect through the vibranium.”

“On it,” Rhodey says. Fury echoes a similar sentiment, and Tony has FRIDAY adjust the settings based on his old data from surreptitiously scanning the hammer any time Thor was in the Tower. Rhodey’s suit picks it up first. 

“Southwest corner of the lake,” he says, and shoots past Tony. Tony makes to follow and the stabilizers stutter. Another alert draws in on Tony’s HUD. 

“Sir,” FRIDAY says, “we’re losing power to the auxiliary—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony mutters. “Try rerouting from the weapons systems, we don’t need any of that.”

“Done.” A pause. “We still only have ten minutes of propulsion, Sir.”

“Okay, what about—”

“Just land, Tony,” Rhodey says. “We’ll take care of this.” Vision crosses beneath him, arcing around the debris-field towards the waterline where Rhodey is already on the hunt. He watches them, feeling—he doesn’t know what. Lost? Powerless? Useless?

Nick says, “Stark.” Tony blinks at Nick’s face on his HUD. “We’ve got a hangar with your name on it. Get up here.” His tone brooks no argument.

The power level indicator drops to 5% and starts to flash. The entire HUD flickers. Tony sighs. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Okay.”

***

He waves off the medics who approach him (are they SHIELD? is SHIELD still a thing?) when he stumbles out of the suit. They hold back, hovering and frowning, and he takes stock of himself in the hangar’s comparatively dim lighting. He has a couple of minor cuts and scratches and his right leg will consist of one long bruise by tomorrow morning, but none of it’s serious enough to risk letting them near him with anything remotely resembling a syringe which might contain a sedative. 

“I’ll be fine,” he insists, and switches his headset feed to Rhodey’s suit. He and Vision are sweeping the lake, going as slow as Rhodey’s stabilizers can tolerate (Tony makes a note to look into that, the suits could use better speed control). They’re about halfway around before the hammer draws in as a sensor overlay somewhere under the surface. 

“Found the hammer,” Rhodey says. “No sign of Thor though.”

Tony thinks back to his rooftop conversation with Steve and Bruce, and really wishes he hadn’t said anything about not everyone making it out alive. He’d been thinking of himself, of course, and like usual it hadn’t occurred to him that it could turn out to be someone else. Certainly not Thor.

Vision says, “There.” Through Rhodey’s feed Tony sees him shoot out over the lake a hundred feet or so, then straight down into it. Rhodey activates the underwater seals and follows. The headset’s resolution isn’t good enough for Tony to make out much more than the bright yellow spark which is the gem in Vision’s forehead and dark blotches of destroyed buildings against slightly less dark water.

In his ears Rhodey says, “Hard to see anything down here,” at almost the exact same moment someone steps up next to him says, “Tony.”

Tony startles and jerks away from Steve. “ _Shit_. Was that necessary?”

Steve holds up his hands and takes half a step back. He’s banged up and his uniform’s a total loss, though other than that he looks okay. “Sorry. You were kind of focused.”

“Well just, a pat on the arm next time or something, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Steve scrutinizes him, and Tony refuses to meet his eyes. He knows what’s coming; Steve is seconds from asking him if he’s alright, and the answer is a resounding ‘No’, but he doesn’t want to have that conversation right now. He really, really doesn’t.

Rhodey saves him from this fate when he says, “Found him.” Steve glances away to focus on the conversation and Tony turns his attention back to the headset. The gem’s yellow light sweeps over something billowing in the water against an enormous chunk of bedrock shot through with glinting vibranium: Thor’s cape.

“How is he?” Steve asks.

After a pause, Vision responds, “Alive.”

“He’s unconscious,” Rhodey adds. “And pinned down.”

“Can you two get him out?” Tony tells himself he doesn’t sound worried.

“Colonel Rhodes and I should be able to free him,” Vision says. He and Rhodey begin discussing how best to do that—it sounds like he’s caught on rock and vibranium at separate points, and they’ll have to cut through both—and Tony finally lets himself relax just a little. He catches Steve watching him.

“What? You want me to put the feed up on a display?”

Steve shakes his head. “It sounds like this could take them a while. You should get to the infirmary and let them patch you up.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“It can wait until they get him on the carrier.”

“It can. It doesn’t have to.” Tony glares at him, but Steve is undeterred. “They found him. He’s alive. He’ll be fine.”

“We don’t know that for sure—”

“You passing out from exhaustion isn’t going to _make_ it sure.”

Tony hangs his head. He's way too tired to fight this. “Fine,” he says, and pulls off the headset. He fingers it for a moment before tossing it in the suit. “FRIDAY, run a full diagnostic.”

“Yes, sir.”

***

He’s successful at preventing anyone from knocking him out with relaxers, which he counts as a small, personal victory. They settle for making him drink an unreasonable amount of electrolyte-laden water and letting them clean the injuries instead, which in the end he agrees to because once he’s sitting on the bed the weariness kicks in and he doesn’t think he can actually get back up. At least his knee’s not dislocated.

He never really falls asleep, just lays there sipping water in a half-conscious state until he sees them roll a gurney with a far-too-big form on top of a length of dripping wet, dark red fabric into the infirmary. He’s off his bed and moving as fast as his aching leg will allow him to go.

Helen is saying, “Let’s get these out, then we can clean and bandage them and let him take care of the rest,” to the medics. Tony has to lean in the doorway a little to see what they mean: there’s a ragged piece of metal (vibranium in all likelihood) sticking out of Thor’s left leg, and a shard of rock in his right shoulder. The hammer is lying on the gurney next to him, flush to his side, the fingers of his right hand resting on the hilt.

He realizes water isn’t the only thing dripping from the cape onto the floor and glances away, and finds himself staring straight at Vision. He staggers back into the door frame and struggles to keep it together.

“Are you well, Mr. Stark?” Vision asks with JARVIS’ voice.

“Ye—no. No. Definitely not.”

“Perhaps you should sit down.”

“Uh, I will. After they’re done in there.”

Vision nods and takes to watching. Tony keeps his head turned so he can’t actually focus on what they’re doing (the sounds are bad enough). They remove the metal and rock without incident and clean up the injuries, and after that things become more mundane: they pull off Thor’s armor, situate him on the bed and hook him up to what few monitoring devices work in close proximity to the hammer, and leave the rest to the regeneration phase.

Tony steps into the room when Helen’s the only one left. Vision doesn’t move, just stays in the doorway. As he approaches, Helen glances up from her tablet and gives him a wane smile. If she’s noticed Vision she makes no indication of it. 

“How are you? Is your leg alright?”

“I’ve been better. Leg’s a mess, but it’ll heal.” He looks pointedly at her shoulder. “How about you?”

Intense weariness flits over Helen’s features, there and gone in a minute. Her own tech has her back on her feet, though she could probably do with a few days rest. Not that she’ll take it. 

“It will heal,” she says. Tony starts to say something else, but Helen’s attention shifts to somewhere over his shoulder. Vision has come into the room.

He moves aside so he’s not between them. For a moment they study one another (Helen’s throat works visibly), then, Vision starts to speak. In Korean.

Of course it would make sense Vision would be able to use multiple human languages, and Helen being the creator of the Cradle made her one of his progenitors, so being respectful to her isn’t a half-bad idea. Helen’s face brightens with surprise, and she smiles, a genuine, full smile. She says something in response, and although Tony’s made a stab at learning some Korean since working with her he can only catch every fifth word. Vision nods at Helen, and smiles back. 

They stare at one another until Helen’s tablet chirps at her. She shakes herself out and looks down at it, and pulls a face. “The tissue regenerator will be very busy today,” she says, and moves to leave the room. She pauses in the doorway and looks between the two of them. “It could be some time before he awakes. He was significantly injured,” she says.

“I’ve got nowhere to be,” Tony says. She nods, glances at Vision, and leaves. 

Tony can feel Vision looking at him, so he keeps his eyes on Thor. The awkwardness level increases steadily until Vision leaves off his staring and moves next to the bed. After a few seconds of contemplation he reaches out tentatively towards Thor’s forehead—and yanks his hand back as an arc of bright blue plasma lashes out at him. 

Tony hides from the flash behind his arms, lowering them only when he’s fairly sure the light show isn’t going to continue or get worse. “What the hell was that?”

Vision examines his hand, turning it this way and that. “A warning, I think.” He flexes his fingers. 

“A warning?”

Vision’s focus shifts the hammer. He says, “I believe it was establishing boundaries.”

Tony briefly considers arguing about whether or not the hammer, as an inanimate object, can even have boundaries which require establishing, to say nothing of the actual ability to establish them, but decides that might get complicated in a big hurry. He settles for, “It was telling you to back off?”

“Not myself, so much as,” Vision touches the gem in his forehead, “this.”

“But you can pick it up.”

Vision continues to study the hammer. “Because it did not take issue. It would appear to feel somewhat different with regard to him.”

“How can it take issue with _anything_ , it’s a—” Tony gestures at the hammer, “a hammer. A hammer made out of ridiculously advanced, alien technology, but, a hammer.”

Vision gives him an amused, sideways glance, and says, “It is a great deal more than that.” Their eyes meet, and Tony realizes for the first time how intensely unsettling they are, with their uncanny valley combination of human-like design built of interlocking, machined parts.

To cover his discomfort he folds his arms and ducks his head. “The hammer’s jealous of the scepter-stone.”

Vision takes to studying the hammer again. “I’m not sure I would call it jealousy. ‘Wariness’ is perhaps a more accurate description.”

Tony waves a hand dismissively. “Either way, it’s perfectly fine with being handed around—to, certain people—but isn’t willing to share Thor.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Rude,” Tony says, and sets to pacing the room. Vision tracks his movement.

“How so?”

“Well, if the hammer gets to shop around, but Thor can’t, it’s kind of—actually, nevermind, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.” Tony just manages to swallow a half-hysterical laugh and runs his hands through his hair.

“You’re acutely distressed.”

“You’re talking with JARVIS’ voice about Thor’s hammer being jealous of the stone in your forehead, and that’s just a _little_ bit weird for me, and considering the life I’ve lead that is saying something.”

“I could sound different, if it would put you at ease.”

“No!” Tony almost shouts it, and surprises himself and Vision in the process. He attempts to dial back his reaction. “It’s fine. Just going to take getting used to.”

Vision hesitates, then nods. “As you prefer.”

Tony doesn’t want to get into what he’d actually prefer (a time machine he could use to go back and undo the last four days), because he thinks Vision might take him at his word, so he rubs at his eyes and says, “This is such a fucking mess.” He looks down at Thor. “And it’s my fault.”

“It is,” Vision says. Tony glares, and Vision shrugs. “I’m merely stating facts.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “JARVIS is definitely still in there.”

“In part, yes.”

“Great. Well, I for one am looking forward to more blunt assessments of my failings.”

“Someone must offer them.”

“Are you sure you’re just _part_ JARVIS, because—” 

His earpiece chirps, and Rhodey says, “Tony.” In the background Tony hears a mix of other voices. Wherever Rhodey is, it’s crowded and busy.

“Yeah.”

“We could use you in the CIC. We’re trying to get the relief efforts started.”

Tony grimaces. As someone responsible for a great deal of what just happened, he’ll have to be intimately involved (or at least his money will) in dealing with the fallout. “Okay. I’ll be up in a second.”

“We’ve got coffee,” Rhodey assures him, and the link falls quiet.

Tony gives Thor a tired look. “It’s not fair. He gets to sleep it all off.”

“At least there will be coffee,” Vision says.

Tony narrows his eyes at Vision and turns to go. “You’re a lot more like JARVIS than you realize,” he says. 

He thinks he sees Vision smile just as he quits the room.


End file.
